The priest presiding over those funerals has described the incident as an act of total evil.

I mean, it's shocking.

And it seems to be, you know, you describe it as an arson attack.

Let's call it what it is.

These people were burnt in their homes and firebombed in their home.

And it seems to be part of a general hardening and coarsening of violence.

You know, if we look at anything from the road instance, driving up the wrong way in the motorway, if you go back to some of the issues in the centre of Dublin, the rights of Dublin, you now look at this, you know, it is a real concern.

Can't

This is high end.

Uh, completely.

And, uh, he had, he left to set up a consultancy, paid a former office manager in, uh, the intelligence agency to slip him, uh, confidential information, including information that was just for the chancellor.

And he's been apparently selling them to foreign agencies.

It's not sure where.

I mean, the initial thing you think he's selling it to Russia, but included some Russian military plans, uh, included plans for I- I- Iran's nuclear facilities.

Um, and he also, it says that he, you know, you, you think spies hide quietly, but it says that he rubbed shoulders with politicians and writers such as John le Carré, who I also knew, 'cause he was a cluster of mine in a bookshop I opened in Hampstead in London.

Comedy Central, DC, Food Network, all getting conglomerated into a single entity.

Is this the point, do you think?

I don't, I, I don't think so.

You know, I really don't.

I just think that, um, uh, e-tailers are very smart at marketing.

They find a way around it.

The real harm here actually is done to UK or to British companies, British SMEs, smaller companies.

In, [laughs] in An Post, and I give you a secret, we always call them the Norfolk jam companies.

There are further issues with these static cameras, these more technical.

possibility for you, which is that if this one is costing us somewhere between 12 and 17 billion, maybe Building 3 might be cost prohibitive.

It could be, but maybe it's not.

Maybe that's what we need to spend.

You know, today the central bank came out with a report and said the Irish savings ratio has gone up from, I think, 12% to just under 20%.

The highest in Europe.

It's a phenomenal amount of savings.

There is money in the economy.

The latest of those, Sam Altman says... that we're right to be afraid of AI, but that we should trust the firms developing it.

Looks like in both instances,

the answer is yes.

Yes.

And actually, I think now we're looking at a row getting pretty serious when defendants are being released.

I mean, it was Mary Rose Gertie, Judge Mary Rose Gertie, who delivered the verdict and ordered the immediate release from jail of eight defendants who had been refused bail.

And, you know, she said...

You know, the remedy of unconditional release is not some kind of bonus granted to an undeserving chancer, but a basic constitutional right.

his persistence.

That wasn't your experience.

No, it was the exact opposite.

I was amazed by how innovative the company was when I went in there.

And now it was going through a tough time then because of a mail volume decline, letters, people stopped sending letters.

But, you know, like all companies are dying, you have to find the next thing.

And we found the next thing, which is e-commerce.

And we doubled down on it.

That is good progress.

Mm.

But we've done that so that we can invest and grow our parcel business and get to the point where the growth in parcels exceeds the decline in mail, and that's happened last year.

And we're now seeing that parcel growth is now, you know, the main driver of An Post for much of the past, uh, 15, 20 years, was mail decline.

The main driver of it, the economics now, is, uh, parcel growth, or what I like to call trading growth.

It's e-commerce.

It's, it's not, you know, this isn't moms sending parcels to people.

This is, this is a fundamental shift in how we live and work and play in our world, and e-commerce is one of the two or three really seismic shifts.

Mm

Mm.

But we've done that so that we can invest and grow our parcel business and get to the point where the growth in parcels exceeds the decline in mail, and that's happened last year.

And we're now seeing that parcel growth is now, you know, the main driver of An Post for much of the past, uh, 15, 20 years, was mail decline.

The main driver of the economics now is, uh, parcel growth, or what I like to call trading growth.

It's e-commerce.

It's, it's not, you know, this isn't moms sending parcels to people.

This is, this is a fundamental shift in how we live and work and play in our world, and e-commerce is one of the two or three really seismic shifts.

Mm

And we start with, I mean, it's the start of a long journey potentially to get there, but the potential of SIP2 balloting strike action.

Yeah, I mean, this is the public pay talks.

The public pay deal ended in June, so they now need to get a new public pay deal.

It's quite a difficult negotiation for government because it pretty much sets the floor for all pay talks.

Because once the price is agreed there, then you're going to get, certainly for any other union talks, you're going to get unions saying, look, this is what it was.

It was agreed at 3.5 or 4 or 3 or whatever it is.

So it's tricky from that perspective.

If you're a union, that's a big threat.

And men almost exclusively pick

non-fiction.

And I think that's a pity because, you know, fiction is, I often describe it as just the non-fiction of our inner world.

How else are we to know how we are? How are we to know what life was like if we don't have fiction? So...

Austerlitz deals with the most difficult story of all, which is the Holocaust.

And it's the story of a kid who grows up in Wales, a miserable life with some Methodist foster parents.

And he makes you feel it.

But your honourable mention?

It's something to the order of 80 or 90%, isn't it?

Well, we're on post is responsible for delivering 40 percent of what comes from outside the EU.

And and this three euro charge is an EU charge and it's designed to stop so many goods coming in cheap goods from China.

And the problem with it is that actually most of those goods come in bulk.

So it's a three euro charge per item.

It's called the small, small parcels charge.

But they come in bulk into Amsterdam or wherever and are then shipped from there.

This is a suggestion that we would pour millions and millions and millions into the redevelopment of the GPO to make it what?

Yeah,

they've done really well online and really pushing their online and I think they've done almost better than anybody else and, you know, it's great to see a different way to generate revenue and, you know, It goes back to a theory I always have.

Every company is dying.

Every industry is dying.

You need to find the next wave.

And media is finding the next wave.

Newspapers really are finding the next wave.

Levees and

David, just tell us about this charge and why you're looking for it to be deferred.

Sure.

Good afternoon.

Shane, the charge is a three euro charge, as you said, on items which will come in from outside the EU.

And it will be a charge to consumers per item that they order, largely affecting e-commerce.

And that's what it is.

And it's an attempt by the EU to to reduce the amount of goods coming in from China.

I mean, could you guys do better than 695, though? No.

WH Smith, yeah.

And started their travel retail, which now that's an interesting story because I started their travel retail, I was given the railway station stores to look after, and I thought, "Oh, my God, what an awful job." And, and but I finally got over myself, found a great team, and then it worked out.

Wow, this is amazing.

All these people going through railway stations and airports and, and we established and said, "Let's set up separate supply chains, different types of merchandising, uh, different pricing, all of that," and it worked fantastically.

And now that is WH Smith.

WH Smith has sold its high street, and it is just the travel retail.

It's a really good example, I think, of how retailing changes.

What have you, what have you learned?

Yeah.

And started their travel retail, which now that's an interesting story because I started their travel retail, I was given the railway station stores to look after, and I thought, "Oh, my God, what an awful job." And, and but I finally got over myself, found a great team, and then it worked out.

Wow, this is amazing.

All these people going through railway stations and airports and, and we established and said, "Let's set up separate supply chains, different types of merchandising, uh, different pricing, all of that," and it worked fantastically.

And now that is WH Smith.

WH Smith has sold its high street, and it is just the travel retail.

It's a really good example, I think, of how retailing changes.

What have you, what have you learned?

No, please don't [laughs]

...

this early in the morning.

Um, but he was telling him he was crazy.

Um, it reminds me that, uh, recently, Janan Ganesh from the Financial Times, he had this theory, which I think is really interesting, is that, you know, we're at a particular stage of real chaos in the world with a group of men in their late 70s fighting for their legacy.

You know, whether that's Trump, Netanyahu, Xi in China, or Modi in India.

That's what we're seeing.

Everybody hates Israel because of this."

So these talks are really important.

They are really important.

But in a sense, it's not necessarily a meeting of two equals.

They're going in different directions.

A friend of mine keeps saying China's won.

You know, in this world of trade wars and trade imbalances and productivity and China has won.

China is just look.

What role do you think drone delivery is going to play in terms of delivering our ordinary mail on a daily basis here in Ireland? I think...

The kind of HGV heavy haulage or heavy torque and power output stuff that tractors will be doing EV hasn't been quite as successful there yet.

No, and I think it isn't proven yet.

I presume it is in this case.

I presume they're confident selling it.

But, you know, we're not confident yet to move to EV trucks.

We power our trucks with HVO, which is an alternative fuel, and that removes about 85% to 90% of the carbon emissions.

But we're not confident enough yet.

How does love and human connection help me with my kidney dialysis?

Italy is trying to stop us banning disposable vapes.

I think this, you know, I kind of see the heavy myths of PR companies all over this.

And, you know, Italy is a major manufacturing manufacturer in Europe, particularly actually in plastics.

And, you know, so I presume that these are vape companies that are lobbying the Italian government.

And so I would say it's nothing more than that.

I don't imagine that it will be given much of an airing.

You know, who needs vapes? We didn't have them before and nobody needed them.

Are you heartened, therefore, by what we're seeing in Galway? The Ring Road is getting planning approval after 30 years? Yeah.

This makes it sound like oil and gas is a disposable thing that you use on a whim.

Yeah, there's a real there is a real whiff of the 1970s about it.

I'm old enough to just about remember that.

In fact, I was looking at the papers.

This was Jennifer Bray, I think, who wrote this in Sunny Times yesterday.

But looking at the papers today, they're also talking about moon flight and people that this Artemis expedition to the moon and.

Things like that.

Potentially an awful lot of sick people attending that GP practice, but one would hope that all of those six certs are entirely legit.

And it seems to be quietly getting swept under the couch.

You know, when I read this, and look, we've all been seeing this, this has been coming for some time, actually.

It's not a surprise, really.

But when I read it, I was thinking of the...

Apple Steve Jobs, you know, dictum, which is don't build technology, create solutions for customers.

Find the problem and create the solution.

But the problem, virtual reality doesn't seem to be doing much of a job of replacing reality.

do we feel sort of a modicum of guilt about the manner in which we did it? The fact that we used EU market access, the fact that we used tax incentives, the fact that we used things like the double Irish, do we feel a bit grotty that we went that way?

How are we getting on in delivering those?

You know, I think I actually think there's great progress has been made, but there's an awful lot more to do.

I mean, the first thing is you have to get it through the political system.

You know, I'm I'm used in private sector.

You agree something, you get it done and take straight away the political system so much more involved.

It's got into the program for government that took some time.

And then it went through a memo to Cabinet in July.

more guards on the street, do you think?